AUTHORITIES SEEK TO STEM TIDE OF SEXTING

Police officer conducts forum at school to warn of dangers

Local authorities are reaching out to parents for help in alerting their children to the dangers — and criminality — of sexting, a growing national issue that now includes about two dozen teenagers countywide being investigated for sending or receiving sexually explicit photos of minors on their cellphones.

The law enforcement campaign included a meeting Thursday night at Cathedral Catholic High School in Carmel Valley, one of the schools with students being scrutinized for sexting. Other suspects come from the San Dieguito Union and San Diego Unified school districts.

At the meeting, which attracted about 100 people, San Diego police Officer Jordan Wells told the audience that monitoring children’s phones and having frank conversations about sexting could spare the kids everything from public embarrassment to criminal prosecution. He said sexting not only could lead to a child pornography charge, but that the people shown in such photos could face long-term problems such as extortion. Wells also pointed out that colleges and prospective employers could come across the images during online background checks.

In at least one case, sexting was linked to a girl’s suicide.

“The fact that we have to have this conversation is unfortunate, but in a way I’m glad,” Wells said. “This is a national problem.”

Before the meeting, Wells said this about his standard caution to parents: “The playground is now the Internet. You don’t expose (your children) to dangers without seeing what’s out there.”

Wells, who has worked in the police department’s Juvenile Services division for five years, organized the Thursday event after authorities announced they were looking into reports that 20 to 30 boys and girls, ages 13 to 18, used their cellphones to send or forward lewd pictures of minors. The investigation is continuing, officials said.

During the Thursday session, a mother asked for advice on what to do if she found inappropriate photos on her child’s cellphone.

“Be a parent,” Wells said. “I can’t tell you to destroy evidence, but be a parent.”

He then elaborated by saying that parents generally shouldn’t worry about going to police with such evidence because authorities are ultimately trying to help children, not label them as sex offenders or pedophiles.

Sexting has been around since at least 2006, said Bill Alpert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Alpert said Thursday from his office in Washington, D.C., that his organization conducted a 2008 study and found that 18 percent of boys and 22 percent of girls had sent nude photos of themselves to friends via their cellphones. The report also said 33 percent of boys and 25 percent of girls had seen lewd photos not originally intended for them.

Another study, this one in 2011 from the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, took exception with the findings from Alpert’s group. The New Hampshire researchers said the 2008 study and other analyses often define sexting or use sampling methods that are vague or outright flawed. They say there are no consistent and reliable findings at this time about the prevalence of sexting.